A few months after I returned to find that the romantic little wood had vanished, and there was a short hole in its place--a hole that any course might be proud to own, and a putting green that the deer might have grazed for centuries. I never saw a more daring bit of architecture, except perhaps at Stonham, the new course near Southampton, where Willy Park has actually built a putting green over a stream. Apart from this one hole, belts of wood had disappeared in all directions as if by magic, and had been replaced by turf; yet there were so many trees left that no one could reasonably complain. There was the course ready to be played on, and a very good course it is--long, difficult, and for the most part entertaining. The turf is good and springy, and where it is intended that the player should get a good lie, he gets an excellent one; where it is intended that he should be in trouble there is likewise no mistake about it. He may lie in a wood, though this is only the penalty for a very heinous crime, and the trees are for the most part kept skilfully in reserve as a second line of defence. He may at one or two holes lie in a lake; and he will often, if he be crooked, lie in a compound of bracken and long grass, which will adequately test his powers of recovery. There are also bunkers, though these, with commendable wisdom, have been put in but sparingly at first, and, at the moment of writing, the foozler's cup of anguish is not yet filled to the brim. As is increasingly becoming the fashion with modern courses, there are a good many one-shot holes; there are, to be precise, four, or, if we can drive a quite abnormal distance, we may include the tenth and say there are five. Of these the seventh hole over the brook before mentioned is the best: indeed it is quite one of the most charming of short holes. Its special virtue is to be found in the fact that we have to approach it at a peculiarly diabolical angle, so that the green becomes exceedingly narrow; a slice takes us into the brook, a pull into a road, and, in short, nothing but a good shot will do. Of the other short holes the most superficially terrifying, to those at least who sometimes drive a little lower than the angels, is the sixteenth, where we must stand on a little peninsula that juts out into the lake and carry some hundred or more yards of water. [Illustration: CASSIOBURY PARK _The new eighteenth hole_]